Sleep apnea is a common sleep disorder characterized by abnormal breathing during sleep. Pauses in breathing for people with sleep apnea can last from a few seconds to minutes during sleep, often resulting in significant levels of sleep disturbance, which may result in daytime fatigue, impaired reaction time, vision problems, and impaired daytime cognition.
Sleep apnea is often treated with a continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) device. CPAP devices prevent reduction of oxygen levels in the blood and sleep loss by delivering a stream of pressured air through a hose to a nasal pillow or full facemask surrounding a patient's nose. The CPAP devices work by blowing air at a prescribed pressure for each patient, and keeping the air passage open to maintain unobstructed breathing throughout a sleep period.
While CPAP treatment can be a highly effective treatment for sleep apnea, a major downside with CPAP treatment is non-compliance by users. Users are often reluctant to continuously use CPAP devices because the nose and face masks may be uncomfortable. In addition, maintenance of many CPAP devices has proved to be tiring and difficult for users, as water vapor running through the hoses and masks of a device may cause bacterial build-up and require continuous cleaning and prevention as necessary steps to safely use a device, which may result in further non-compliance by users. Most manufacturers of CPAP devices recommend that users perform daily and weekly maintenance on their machines to prevent bacteria and mold buildup. In this instance, each part of the CPAP device needs to be cleaned individually, including the mask, the hoses and the humidification portion, which is difficult and time consuming for users on a daily or weekly basis. Other CPAP device cleaning methods include soaking the component parts of a CPAP device in a mixture of vinegar and water to disinfect the component parts. Because of the inherent nature for CPAP devices to collect bacteria and mold, a number of other products are available to consumers to make CPAP machines safer, including but not limited to:    Citrus II Cleaning Spray for masks and tubing, available at www.cpapxchange.com    Contour CPAP cleaning wipes    CPAP tube cleaning brushes, available at www.cpapxchange.com    CPAP Guardian, available at www.cpapguardian.com
Further, several patents and patent applications have been filed on CPAP devices, improvements and the like. The patents in the field of CPAP devices include U.S. Pat. Nos. 8,146,946, 8,051,853, 7,794,522, 7,845,350, 7,676,276, 6,276,304, 7,527,603, 7,767,168, 6,752,151, 6,280,633, 7,022,225, 4,787,980 and US application numbers: 20100111792, 20060130834, 20040251125, 20050186108.
While some of the existing products, patents and applications described above refer to CPAP systems, methods and devices, there is no system, method or device shown that describes an automated disinfecting system or method for a CPAP device, for ease of use of users and to improve user compliance. In addition, the use of ozone to sanitize, disinfect and clean CPAP devices is a long felt need in the art as a safe and easy disinfectant system for improved compliance of a user, as described in accordance with the present invention.
Other systems, methods, device features, and advantages of the present invention will be or become apparent to one with skill in the art upon examination of the following drawings and detailed description. It is intended that all such additional systems, methods, device features, and advantages be included within this description, be within the scope of the present invention, and be protected by the accompanying claims.